Chain of thought
In one line: A prompting technique where the AI explains its reasoning step by step before giving a final answer — usually more accurate than direct answers.
Chain of thought (CoT) prompting asks the AI to think out loud. Instead of jumping to an answer, the model walks through intermediate reasoning steps. This dramatically improves accuracy on math, logic and multi-step problems.
Old way: 'What's 17 × 23?' → model often gets it wrong.
CoT way: 'What's 17 × 23? Think step by step.' → model decomposes (17×20 = 340, 17×3 = 51, 340+51 = 391) → correct.
Modern reasoning models like DeepSeek R1 and OpenAI's o-series models do CoT internally — they produce a long hidden chain of thought before answering, which is why they're slower but more accurate.
See it in action — ask any AI about chain of thought on AskAI.free.
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